There was a strange news item
last week: the President got off the helicopter with a Styrofoam cup and
saluted the Marines with said cup in his hand.
Taken alone, this isn’t a big
deal. Senior folks, including Secretaries and Senators, do things like that.
Most Presidents have as well. By itself, a single such event, or even several
such events, means nothing.
But… I know some 3 and 4 star
generals; these men know the protocol and rules as well as any protocol
officer; their wives do too, through simple repetition. Yet, they are still
briefed for every single meeting and event, and the staffs keep an eye on
things so they know ‘what’s what.’ I know, I was an ‘EA’ - Executive Assistant
– to a 4 star Admiral, a Combatant Commander. His staff, like the staffs of
other 3 and 4 star officers, was trained from day one to never let certain
things happen. The staffs never let the ‘Boss’ step out of the office with
something in their hands, a button not right, a crooked tie, etc. Good staffs
don’t let it happen. Simply put, Chiefs of Staff, aides and all the
strap-hangars are supposed to not only know the rules, they are supposed to
take care of the boss – and the boss needs to let them. The more senior the
staff, the more true this is. So, when you see a picture and the President has
his hands folded, the first lady has her hands at her side and beside her
someone has his hands over his heart, the aides and chief of staff are screwed
up.
But there is another point: if
these things happen during the first few months of a Presidency, give it a
pass. After that, everyone should not only have heard the protocol, everyone
should be aware that they are supposed to have some aide walk them through
precisely what is going to happen when they walk out of the office – whatever
it might be. It’s not magic, it’s good staff work and it’s recognition of
expertise.
I had a Marine Gunnery Sergeant
who ‘worked’ for me for a couple of years. (For those of you who have no
military experience, there is a little humor here, the idea that a Marine
Gunnery Sergeant – the ‘Gunny’ – works ‘for’ a junior officer is kind of funny.
It is more accurate to say that the Gunny is trying to make the junior officer
into a real officer. If the officer listens well, he will make it. If he acts
like he knows as much as the Gunny, he won’t.) One thing the told me is that
you can tell a lot about a unit – and the commander of the unit – by how he
looks. If the platoon leader (company commander, battalion commander, all the
way up to whatever rank you want to put in here – 4 star general, Secretary of
Defense, President) is walking out the door and something is wrong with how he
appears, the platoon will stop him and fix it. But they don’t do it for him,
they do it for the unit (platoon, battalion, regiment, ship, squadron, etc.),
They don’t want their unit to look bad, and he represents the unit.
So, when the ‘Boss’ – of whatever
rank – walks out the door, you stop him, give him a quick once-over, and make
sure he looks good. If he has to do something – give a speech, officiate at
some ceremony, etc. – you make sure he is as ready as you can make him, knows
what to do, and when.
And so, as the Gunny told me, if
you see a guy do something stupid two or three times in a row, if you see
someone show up and his uniform is all wrong – and it happens repeatedly, the
unit hates him. It means, very simply, that morale has broken down to such a
point that they no longer care how they look, how his appearance will reflect
on them.
Why is this relevant?
Because a well functioning staff
is about more than getting protocol right, or looking ‘put together’ as you
step off the aircraft. It’s about making sure all the little things flow
together so that all the big things flow together. And, it means listening to
the people who know about ‘X,’ recognizing that the President and his immediate
staff have a narrow slice of expertise relative to the vast breadth of issues
the nation’s executive branch faces daily.
So, we’re now dropping bombs on
Syria, the same Syria that a year or so ago this President wanted to bomb into
the Stone Age. (Doing so would have made the victory of ISIS that much more
certain.) The US is leading a bombing campaign against ISIS, yet virtually
every military authority – including the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and
every retired 4 star who’s been asked – has expressed concerns about this
strategy.
Whenever any strategy is sent
forward, it’s presented as one of several options. Each option is presented
with its strengths and weaknesses. The perennial weakness with bombing
campaigns is that they haven’t worked when conducted in isolation. Even in the
much-studied operations in Kosovo, the Yugoslavian government finally agreed to
a ceasefire because of the presence of several insurgent armies, and statements
from Prime Minister Blair that the UK would lead an invasion of Kosovo with
50,000-men.
The point is this: there’s little
likelihood that this current strategy is going to succeed in returning
stability, order and security to northern Iraq or Syria. It may well make the
situation worse, fueling radicals and insurgents and convincing many that the
US and the West isn’t really willing to pay the costs needed to address ISIS.
So we’re left with this: why is
it that the President has repeatedly decided on strategies that look good in
the short term but leave the US with no long-term solutions? For example, some
insist the President’s tactics against Al Qaeda have yielded positive results,
but consider:
In 2001 al Qaeda was a small,
well-funded organization with less than 200 people, and they pulled off an
horrific – and spectacular - attack against the US. 13 years later we’ve spent
several trillion dollars, lost 6,000+ troops, killed AQ’s founder and leader,
and killed perhaps 95% of everyone in AQ who assumed any leadership position,
and AQ now has operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Syria, Algeria,
Libya, Somalia and India. And, we have arguably destabilized Pakistan. Does
that look like a good plan?
To return to the earlier point:
the President was careless about the Styrofoam cup. He was careless because it
simply isn’t important to him what he has in his hand when he salutes the
Marines. And that isn’t important to him because he really isn’t terribly fond
of the US military. And because of that, he really doesn’t listen to their
advice – whether on protocol or tactics or strategy.
So, at a certain point, folks
just give up. They don’t consciously give up; but their morale breaks down.
They get intellectually dull, because it is too hard to care when your boss
keep sending the signals that he doesn’t care about any of the things you care
about.
The Secret Service clearly has
morale problems. If you have had any experience at all, even the most basic, in
security, or any training in security, if you have ever had to work with a
personal security detachment for a VIP, the mistakes that were made and now
reported in the press are glaring; they are fundamental errors of the sort
expected by inexperienced teams, not the Secret Service.
The talent remains in the Secret
Service; but the morale has been steadily eroded over time. For the last 5
years the Secret Service has worked in an environment in which their work has
been at best taken for granted, and more often, looked down on by the vast majority
of the staffers in the White House. The President and his senior assistants may
not have actively participated, but they have allowed that atmosphere to
persist. The result is what we see in the papers.
The simple truth is that there
are people offering practical alternatives to the current strategy in the Mid
East, just as there are people who would take that Styrofoam cup out of the
President’s hand - and all the other issues in between – and there are a host
of them. For some reason no one is paying any attention to any of those people.
Maybe it’s time they start.
